Moon landing apart, Indian science punches far below its weight

Shivakumarriah V. wanted to get his head examined. Not that his behaviour had been odd of late. The 61-year-old civil contractor was on a routine visit to the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore, the country’s leading research institution and one of his clients, when he heard about a study into the human brain. So he offered his up for inspection.

He arrived at the sleek new Centre for Brain Research (CBR) in IISc’s lush campus early one morning in November. Clinicians took his height, weight and blood and checked his heart. A neuropsychologist conducted a cognitive assessment. Another clinician checked his gait and balance, looked at the back of his eyeballs for a test known as optical coherence tomography, and, after a light lunch, led him to another room for an mRI.